Coming into this year he was stil struggling with consistency. Bruce Boudreau made it a point to talk about how he was going to use him as a weapon, and he's having one of the best overall seasons of his career.

Bert may need to take Tootoo's role for one game and drop the gloves if they are going to keep running at guys like they did at the end. Don't want this to be another situation like Weber and Nashville last year.

saying ther Eller hit shoud not be anything like a suspension level hit, and on further review probably shouldn't have been a penalty by NHL standards (though I can see why it was called that way in real time). Diaz should be feeling much guiltier for sending a pass like that than Gryba should about the hit, which definitely looks like a shoulder on shoulder hit with the puck in close vicinity in slow motion.

Also, so f*&^ing glad the Wings have come out with some fire. Keep this up and game three becomes a huge one back in Detroit.

"We bring you to Michigan to take care of Michigan; your job is to protect that block M."
-Carol Hutchins

Man that was nasty. Just a combination of bad luck and a suicide pass from Diaz. If Gryba hits Eller squarely on the body (not saying that is his fault) he is probably okay right now. It just happened to be a little clip that knocked him out, and then face first into the ice.

The one good thing about booting Gryba from the game is avoiding escalation, which surely would have gotten out of hand had he stayed on.

it looks like he catches him pretty squarely on the shoulder, but I never saw a great angle on the whole play, maybe there will be something new on YouTube today. The angle they kept showing on TV looks a lot more like he hits him up high, but even then the onus isn't on Gryba to avoid contact to the head that's brought about by virtue of being like six inches taller (although he can't target the head, obviously).

I agree this was a classic case of terrible luck for Eller, hopefully they release him from the hospital today and he's back to playing soon.

"We bring you to Michigan to take care of Michigan; your job is to protect that block M."
-Carol Hutchins

was borderline. Hitting a guy four feet off the boards is reckless as hell and Abdelkader came off the ice on top of that. At the very least a double minor for boarding and cross checking would be a good call.

Hope Franzen is okay. Looks like he should be, albeit with a bad bruise in the morning.

"We bring you to Michigan to take care of Michigan; your job is to protect that block M."
-Carol Hutchins